Speculation that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will enter the presidential race has led to a feverish debate about the possibility of having the fattest man in the White House since the corpulent William Howard Taft squeezed behind the big desk in the Oval Office.

Of course Taft, who reportedly weighed nearly 340 pounds during his presidency, ran for the highest office in 1908 when there wasn't the same focus on image and no need to worry about how a candidate looked on television.

Christie, who had ruled it out for months has been reconsidering whether to join the race for the Republican nomination in the past week, according to news reports.

He talks about his battle to lose weight and sometimes jokes about his size - he once exaggerated that he was 550 pounds. But he has not disclosed his actual weight.

That hasn't stopped an onslaught from television comedians and newspaper columnists in the past week.